Majority of Canadians back some abortion restrictions

More than one quarter of Canadians, 27%, said that human life should be protected from conception onwards, 21% said there should be protection after three months of pregnancy and 11% after six months. Only 22% agreed with the status quo which is no legal protection until a child is born.

“Politicians are out of touch with Canadian sentiment,” said Andrea Mrozek, manager of research at the Institute for Marriage and Family.

Mrozek also thinks most media are out of touch with public sentiment on this issue.

“We’ve been told that women are of one unanimous opinion on abortion, and that women are overwhelmingly pro-choice,” Mrozek said. “As it turns out this poll shows much more diversity and even much more of a pro-life sentiment amongst women.”

The poll shows that 63% of women believe in restricting abortion either before or at the sixth month compared to 56% of men.

Just to be clear, I don’t think most women are pro-life, either. But what I do think is that there is no one “women’s viewpoint” on this issue and if there were “my body, my choice” wouldn’t be it. It would be much more nuanced than that.